195/365: National Grand Marnier Day

Orange you glad we get to raise our glasses to toast another alcoholic beverage today? July 14 is National Grand Marnier Day!

Grand Marnier is an orange-flavored liqueur invented in 1880 by Alexandre Marnier-Lapostolle. It’s made with cognac brandy, bitter orange essence, and sugar. In other words, it’s high-end stuff (and also explains why I usually just substitute generic triple sec in cocktail recipes calling for Grand Marnier – but there’s no cheating allowed today). Grand Marnier is a popular ingredient in a large variety of drinks including the Cosmopolitan, Margarita, Sidecar, Dirty Harry, Grand Mimosa, B-52,The Bloody Smash, The Maced Marnier, The Ace Marnier Smash, Frosty Smash, The Smace, The Grand Hound, The Blood Pug, The Clarke, The Nogley and the Grand Marnier Fireball. I don’t know about you, but I’m dying to walk into a bar and order a Blood Pug someday, just for the hell of it! The original name of the drink was Curaçao Marnier after the Caribbean island where the oranges used in the liqueur were grown, but a friend of Alexandre’s said the name “wasn’t grand enough.” Hence, Grand Marnier!

Since I don’t have a lot of background info to discuss, I thought I’d take a moment to give you a glimpse into some of the behind-the-scenes action here at Eat My Words. For instance, did you know these posts are usually written ahead of time? Sometimes days and days ahead of time, as a matter of fact. At one point we had ten posts all ready to go. I’ll research the food history, come up with a few funny asides, and save it as a draft, filling in the blanks – I rarely know the specifics of what we are eating or drinking until the actual day, and of course I can’t take a picture of the actual food until it’s right there in front of us (all photos are mine, and are of the actual food or beverage we are about to consume) – when I’m ready to post. It didn’t start out this way, but since the majority of challenges are completed in the evening, I quickly learned that it was a lot of work after an otherwise long day to research and write these posts, so having it done ahead of time would be advantageous. The same was true with weekends. We’re usually on the go and busy doing other things, so having posts written in advance allows us to maximize our enjoyment of that time off. Only recently have I been writing even further ahead. Case in point: as I’m typing these words, it’s actually Tuesday morning, not Sunday evening. Shh. Most of the time the process is seamless and nobody is the wiser, but sometimes plans change and I forget to make corrections to the already-written post. For instance, a couple of weeks ago we had planned to be in Seattle, so I had written that we were there. Then we decided to delay our trip, but I forgot to delete one line in which I said we were “busy with family obligations in Seattle.” Which, of course, Tara’s mom caught. Oops. The lesson to be learned is: edit, edit, edit!

This weekend, we really were in Seattle. (He says, past tense, even though we aren’t leaving for three more days. Just go with the flow, okay? If anything changes/d, I’ll fix this). Now, for the actual, LIVE part of the post:

When we got home, we enjoyed Grand Marnier two ways. We took a shot straight up, and it was smooth and tasty. We wanted to jazz things up a bit and do something unique with this ingredient as well, since we’ve admittedly been coasting by lately, so Tara found a recipe for shrimp marinated in a mixture of tequila, lime juice, Grand Marnier, cilantro, and cumin and served on a bed of romaine with crispy tortilla strips. We grilled those to go alongside steaks, and ended up with a second great way to enjoy this most excellent beverage!

Grand Marnier two ways: in a shot glass, and as part of a marinade for grilled shrimp.